bad as an action objectively right but done against
conscience. Thus, without allowing that conscientious persecutors of
Christians act rightly, he is not afraid, in the application of his
principle, to say that they would act still more wrongly if through not
listening to their conscience, they spared their victims. But this
means only that by following conscience we avoid sinning; for virtue in
the full sense, it is necessary that the conscience should have judged
rightly. By what standard, however, this is to be ascertained, he
nowhere clearly says. _Contemptus Dei_, given by him as the real and
only thing that constitutes an action bad, is merely another subjective
description.

ST. BERNARD of Clairvaux (1091-1153), the strenuous opponent of
Abaelard, and the great upholder of mysticism against rationalism in
the early scholastic period when the two were not yet reconciled, gave
utterance, in the course of his mystical effusions, to some special
views of love and disinterestedness.

There are two degrees of Christian virtue, Humility and Charity or
Love. When men look into themselves, and behold the meanness that is
found there, the fitting state of mind is, first, humility; but soon
the sense of their very weakness begets in them charity and compassion
towards others, while the sense also of a certain human dignity raises
within them feelings of love towards the author of their being. The
treatise _De Amore Dei_ sets forth the nature of this love, which is
the highest exercise of human powers. Its fundamental characteristic is
its disinterestedness. It has its reward, but from meriting, not from
seeking. It is purely voluntary, and, as a free sentiment, necessarily
unbought; it has God for its single object, and would not be love to
God, if he were loved for the sake of something else.

He distinguishes various degrees of love. There is, first, a natural
love of self for the sake of self. Next, a motion of love towards God
amid earthly misfortunes, which also is not disinterested. The third
degree is different, being love to God for his own sake, and to our
neighbour for God's sake. But the highest grade of all is not reached,
until men come to love even themselves only by relation to God; at this
point, with the disappearance of all special and interested affection,
the mystic goal is attained.

JOHN of SALISBURY (d. 1180) is the last name to be cited in the early
scholastic period. He professed to be a practi